Video: Sharing a document on the free Microsoft SkyDrive web site

Sometimes you need to share your work with people who aren't on your network. Maybe they work for different companies, or you want to share documents with the general public. Other times you might want to make documents available for download only to people who have a password that you give them, or you might want to store documents online just for yourself to use, kind of like having a virtual USB memory stick. Well, Microsoft makes these features available for free. So let's take a look. We are going to go to their SkyDrive web site. So I am going to go up here and go to SkyDrive, and also a little tip here for you: when you want to go to a regular .com you can just type the thing in the middle and press Ctrl+Enter, and it fills in the ww and all that.

Sharing a document on the free Microsoft SkyDrive web site

Sometimes you need to share your work with people who aren't on your network.Maybe they work for different companies, or you want to share documents withthe general public.Other times you might want to make documents available for download only topeople who have a password that you give them, or you might want to storedocuments online just for yourself to use, kind of like having a virtual USB memory stick.Well, Microsoft makes these features available for free.So let's take a look.We are going to go to their SkyDrive web site.So I am going to go up here and go to SkyDrive, and also a little tip here for you:when you want to go to a regular .com you can just type the thing in the middleand press Ctrl+Enter, and it fills in the ww and all that.

This is a free service.So the first time you're using it, if you haven't signed up already, youcan click that Sign Up.I've already created an account, so I am going to sign in.So I have logged in, and I have my four default folders:My Documents, Public, Favorites, and Shared favorites.Now you see Public has a little globe on there, so that means that anyonewho stumbles onto my SkyDrive site will have full access to anything that's in there.Now My Documents has a lock, so that's accessible only to people who have the password.

Also, don't confuse My Documents here with My Documents on your computer.Microsoft has just given the same name to two different things.Well, let's say I want to share an inventory list of my olive products withvendors, or again, anyone who has the password.Now, even though My Documents is password protected, let's say I haveother stuff in there.I don't want to get it cluttered up.So I am going to create a new folder.So I will go up here.I will Create the folder, and I will call this Two Trees, and I am going toshare just with me, so that will keep it locked. Click Next.

If I had any files that I wanted to upload immediately, I could do that usingthese Browse buttons here.But I don't have anything right now, so I am just going to click on theTwo Trees link here.So now this shows me the folder.And it's empty, obviously, because I just created the folder.Now that we have this set up, let's go into Excel, and in Excel we can savefiles into this folder in our SkyDrive account.If you still have the workbook opened from the last exercise, that's fine.I have opened here 02_03 sky drive.xlsx.

I am going to into Backstage View, so I will click the File tab, and let's godown here to Save & Send, and in this panel let's choose Save to Web.Now you may have other things in there.I am going to hit this Refresh button, and there it finds that Two Trees.Now you might be wondering, "Well wait a minute.How on earth does Excel know that I just created this?"Well, we will come to that in a moment.So first let's just click that and Save As, or we could double-click it, either way.

Here, this is looking at the Two Trees folder.Again, it's empty because we haven't put anything in there yet.So here is where you can tell Excel where your folder is.If this is the first time you are doing it, what you want to do is go back intothe browser and select the URL from the Address bar, copy it - I will justCtrl+C - come back in here, then you can simply click in there, paste it in, andthen Save, and it will be there.So that's how you can get Excel to find it for the very first time.Once you've done that, you don't have to do that again.

So I am going to keep the same file name, I will click Save, and you see downhere, it says Uploading to the server, and now it's saved.So up here, you can see the file name hasn't changed.Now let's go back into the browser, and by the way, you could use InternetExplorer or Firefox; it works well with both of them.Now, you say, "Well, wait a minute.There is nothing here."Well, we have to Refresh.So you could either click the Refresh button, or press the F5 key on yourkeyboard, and there it is.So there is the file that we have just saved.So now we know - there is no smoke and mirrors - that the file that we saved inExcel is indeed up in the cloud.

So let's go do something with it.So I am going to click the icon here, and you see we have a few options, andhere is a web address.So if I wanted to share this file with someone who has my ID and password, Icould simply copy this web address and e-mail them the link.Well, right now let's click this big icon, and there it is.There is the file that we just had.Now right now you can't edit it.You can click around, you can scroll up and down, but there's really no editing.So if all you need to do is view it, well that's great.

But maybe you want to edit this in the browser.So click up here, Edit in browser.Now we get this error message, says, This workbook is locked. Let me OK it.Well, here's what's happening is we still have it open in Excel.So you need to remember to close the workbook in Excel first before opening it up on the web.So I am going to do, I will just press Ctrl+F4 to close it.Now let me go back here into the browser, and I am going to Refresh. There it is.

Now it still just view only.Now I will click Edit in browser, and here it is.Now it's opened for editing, and now you see a Ribbon bar that looks kind oflike what you have in Excel and you see up here, this tells you it's aMicrosoft Excel Web App.And at the end of this course, I am going to go back into the Excel web app in alittle bit more detail.But for now, I just want to show you few things.So let's say if I decide that I want to change some numbers, I can go and do that.If I want to change some of the formatting, I can do that as well.

I could also go and add things.I am going to go down here.Let's say I want to add the total of column B. Well, you might notice that thisRibbon bar doesn't have an AutoSum tool.So you have to know some functions.I am going to use the Sum function.So I will just say =sum open up the parenthesis, and I want to get the sumof, now this is B5, through - just scroll down - through B27, enter it, andthere it gives me the total.I will just type the word "Total."Also, you notice there is no Auto Fill, so I would have to go and manuallycopy that, go down here,double-click and paste, but instead of column B, I want column C. So you can dosome calculations, if you know what they are without having to use tools.

Now let's say I am done editing the file on the web, and you might wonder "Well,okay, wait a minute.If I have Excel, why on earth would I want to go in here that has a nice Ribbonbar, but it's only a little bit of the ribbon that they have in Excel, why wouldI want to edit it here as opposed to Excel?" and the reason is let's say youmight be on the road.Maybe you're at your client's office and you want to do some quick edits.Maybe you don't have your laptop with you and you want to be able to do a quick edit.So you could come in here and do some quick edits, and then when you get back toyour office, then you can go and download it and use it.

So the Excel web app is great, but it's not really a full substitute for theentire Excel package.But if you want to save this to go and use it, well you notice, hey there is no Save button.And if you go to the File tab, you'll notice there is a Save As.If I want to save it under a new name, it even tells us, hey, where's the Save button?The reason there isn't a Save button is this is saving for you automatically.Every time you make a change and Enter, it saves it.So what I want to do is I want to open this up in Excel.

So I will click this, Open in Excel, and it's giving me a warning. Click OK.And now it's going to take that file from SkyDrive and download it, open it here -boom, and there it is.So now I would say, oh, maybe I want to put my AutoSum tool here, and I'll just put that in.Now I have to enable editing, because this came from the web.So we will have to click up here, and it's perfectly fine.Now, of course, it's adding the wrong thing, but that's okay.

I can just add the correct stuff.Press Ctrl+Enter, and there it is.So I could edit it here, as well as I can edit it up on the web.Also, notice the file name has changed a little bit to be web compatible.I am going to save it.You see it's Uploading to server. To close it,I will press Ctr+F4.Now let me go back here into SkyDrive, and now I will click the File, go backin, and there you see is the total that I added in Excel.

So you can roundtrip this pretty easily.So I am going to go back into the Two Trees folder.There is my file, so now at anytime, I could come back in here later and edit it.So SkyDrive is a really great feature.It's not a full substitute for Excel, but it's really nice being able to putyour work up in the cloud, so that you can retrieve it whenever you want.

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